"The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you."--Terry Eagleton

"It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?--Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice."--Bryan Stevenson

Of Cabbages and Kings

BBC World Service reported today that no democratically elected leader had called Recep Tayyip Erdogan to congratulate him on winning a referendum giving him even more power. The only congratulations, they noted, had come from "dictators and kings."

About twenty minutes later they reported that Turkish media was reporting Trump had called Erdogan to congratulate him.

Maybe somebody in the White House can establish a rule: the POTUS can use his phone for Twitter, or he can use the real phone in the Oval Office to call national leaders. But he can't do both; and either one has to be carried out under strict oversight.

Other countries to offer their congratulations to Erdogan included Qatar, Azerbeijan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, Turkish state media said.